


Alternate World

by EimiWinchester (Siyah_Kedi)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, FBI Agent Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Alternating, Sibling Incest, Temporary Character Death, i'm still not sure where this is going, that's an actual tag, will update tags as necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21928060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siyah_Kedi/pseuds/EimiWinchester
Summary: Tear me awayFrom this fightTear me awayTake me to anAlternate worldAlternate ageAlternate lifeSam casts a spell to take him to where Dean is whole and alive, and ends up in another world.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	1. the Spell

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Son Lux song of the same name. 
> 
> So I was gonna write this whole thing out before I started posting it, but as you can see, that didn't happen. Updates may be spotty, as i am working full time trying to find a job, and am just starting to pull myself out of a major depressive episode.

Desperation tastes like dry dust, gritty against his tongue. The wind whips his voice away from his ears before he can hear himself. Salty tears track lines down his cheeks; if this works, he'll go to a new place - a better place. A place where Dean isn't lying in bloody pieces a few feet away, where Castiel is whole again, and maybe, just maybe, a place where he won't be alone. 

He's drawn the circle around the car - a completely ridiculous waste of already-limited resources, but he's bringing it with him if he can. He can't abandon her to the elements alone, she's been through too much with him. With them all. Book clutched tightly to his chest, he recites the spell feeling the power drawn to the circle. It builds until his ears pop with the changing pressure. They might be bleeding; sound wavers in and out. The last word is obscured as it leaves his mouth, drowned out by a clap of thunder and the fabric of the world is ripped apart. He flies, or falls - 

into 

darkness...


	2. the Dinner

He stumbled into a parked car, and trembled. The spell had taken a lot out of him, and he wasn’t sure where he’d ended up. The sun was bright, and there were birds singing, so it didn’t really resemble the dismal place he’d just left, but that didn’t mean much in the overall scheme of things. It could just be another city, somewhere far away from ground zero. Something about the air felt different, however. He couldn’t put his finger on it. He could barely see past the end of his nose. He staggered forward a few more steps, mumbling to himself. The book was gone. He couldn’t tell if the car had come through with him. He needed to lay down and sleep, but first, he needed to find somewhere safe to stay. Reeling, he groped into his pocket and felt the wads of paper there. The money was with him; if he could get out of this suburban nightmare, he could find a place to crash. He was in danger of passing out on the street, though, and it would be just his luck to get rolled while he was down. He stumbled into a bush and clutched at it for support. A familiar voice came to him from somewhere far away. 

“Heyah, Sammy!” 

_ Dean. _ It was Dean. It was  _ Dean. _ Alive. Sam teetered and crashed. 

*

Dean watched the guy lurch into the hedges that lined his yard, and tallied him. Dirty clothes, unwashed skin, messy, probably greasy hair - he was clearly homeless. He looked like he’d been living rough for months, which was weird because Dean knew all the homeless people in the area, and this wasn’t one of them. With one eye on the homeless guy, he snagged his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his brother. The call rolled into voicemail, which wasn’t surprising. 

“Heyah, Sammy,” he said cheerfully. “Just calling to make sure you haven’t burned your apartment down yet. Say hello to Jess for me, would you?  _ Holy shit! _ ” The last was unintended as the homeless guy finally lost the battle with gravity and hit the ground. Dean ended the call and ran for him. His pulse was weak and rapid, but he seemed to be breathing okay. Dean patted him down for weapons, and found more than he was expecting. A sawn-off shotgun down one leg of his pants, two semi-automatic pistols, three large and wicked looking knives, and probably a thousand dollars in cash. “Who the hell  _ are _ you?” Dean wondered aloud. 

The guy moaned when Dean tried to shift him. “Cas,” he muttered. 

“Your cash is fine,” Dean reassured him. Something about the guy was familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why or from where. “Get up. Do you need me to call an ambulance?” 

Hazel eyes blinked open and blearily focused on him. “Huh?” 

“Hospital?” 

“No!” The violence of his reaction wasn’t totally unexpected, but Dean was still startled into dropping him back onto the pavement. The guy rolled like a combat veteran and came up on his knees, looking around. “No hospital,” he said again. “You - you’re Dean, right?” 

Instantly guarded, Dean wished he’d gotten into the habit of carrying all the time. What was the point of having a concealed weapons license if he never concealed weapons on himself? “Well, I’m afraid you have the advantage of me here,” he said. “You know who I am, but I don’t know you.” 

Something complicated passed over his face. “You don’t -” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m Sam,” he said earnestly, looking into Dean’s eyes with an expression that was hauntingly familiar on those barren features. “Sam Winchester, I’m - I’m your brother.” 

With that, his eyes rolled up into his head and he pitched forward, fully unconscious. Dean caught him by instinct, staring into that oh-so-familiar face. 

*

The next time Sam opened his eyes, he was looking up into an unfamiliar ceiling. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual; he was used to seeing strange rooms around him from moving around, a new motel every night. The sensation of a soft, clean-smelling couch under him was a little strange, but then his short term memory reasserted itself. He jerked upright, and found himself in an equally clean-looking living room. The walls were slightly off-white, and there were actual pictures on them, in frames. Sam’s jaw dropped when he recognized Dean in most of the images, surrounded by people he didn’t know. In one of the pictures was Sam himself, with a beautiful brunette woman he didn’t recognize. 

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.” 

The voice was familiar even if the tone wasn’t, but Sam still reacted without thinking, reaching for one of his weapons. Dean raised an eyebrow, clearly aware of what he was doing. 

“I’ll give you your guns back when you can prove you own them or aren’t going to shoot me.” 

Sam slumped against the back of the couch, swinging his legs down. His boots were missing, too. He’d forgotten what it could be like to have Dean’s mistrustful gaze on him. He hadn’t missed it. “I wouldn’t shoot you,” he muttered. His head was throbbing. His stomach was cramping painfully, and he still felt like he needed a week’s sleep. He furtively took stock of the rest of the room. Three massive windows overlooked the sunny front yard, hemmed in by the bushes he'd fallen into when he arrived. 

A slow smile curved his lips as he realized it had worked. Here was Dean, alive and well and right in front of him! Looking at Sam like he was something scraped off the bottom of his shoe, but that, unfortunately, wasn't an unfamiliar expression.  _ But he's alive! _

Two more doorways led into what was presumably the rest of the house. "You live here?"

Dean strode into the room, and Sam hungrily catalogued the movement. He walked like Dean, he sounded like him, he'd  _ done _ it. In the back of his mind, he wondered if the car had come through after all, and where it was. 

"I'm asking questions," Dean told him. Settling into the armchair, Dean pulled a handgun on him, braced his elbows on his thighs, and sighted him down the barrel. "Who the fuck are you?"

Well, this wasn't ... unexpected. Not entirely. "I'm Sam Winchester, I told you that already." 

"Tell me why you have five separate IDs on you. My favorite is the one with "Mark Hamill" on it, but I also see your face next to FBI agent Sam Wesson, CDC agent Sam Smith, and ATF agent Sam Bellini. Your driver's license is the only one that reads Sam Winchester, and it's expired. So I'll ask you again. Who. The fuck.  _ Are you. _ " 

Dean looked entirely ready to shoot him. It would be terribly bad luck to succeed in sending himself to where Dean was alive, if Dean shot him dead in his own …

Sam reconsidered. Dean probably  _ wouldn't _ shoot him dead in his own living room. This Dean was clearly not the shoot first kind of guy, and he  _ lived _ here. He wouldn't want to get taken away for murder. Especially not when Sam looked like - and smelled like - a random, well-armed hobo. "You can't shoot me," he blurted out. "You'd get arrested." 

"Boy, I could arrest  _ you _ right now for impersonating a federal agent - four different federal agents - or any one of those unlicensed guns you're carrying, or that cash you probably stole. I'll shoot you if you so much as breathe wrong, now answer my question and stop lying to me!"

Sam sucked in a breath. Dean was  _ so much _ like John it almost ached. Even the tone of voice he used when he said "boy." "I don't know what kind of life you're living here, so you probably won't believe me even if I did tell you."

"This is your last warning," was Dean's menacing reply. The gun never wavered. 

"Okay," Sam said, defeated. "My name is Sam Winchester. I was born May 2nd, 1983. Six months later, November 2nd, my mother was killed by a demon who gave me his blood to turn me into a weapon for Satan." 

*

The story was as wild as it was unbelievable. Dean realized that he'd let the gun dip somewhere in the last hour, but his gut was saying this Sam was telling the truth. Another world with demons and angels and a runaway God who brought back every evil thing in the world just to test them sounded like the most outlandish of fiction. The kid was doing a poor job of editing himself - odd trailing off, hastily replaced word choices, everything about it suggested he wasn't telling the entire truth, but Dean couldn't shake the feeling that what he  _ was _ saying was factual. His brother Sammy was the same. It was what made him such an effective prosecutor; he turned those doe eyes on the jury and it was as if they had no choice but to convict. 

“You’re from another world, and I died, so you cast a spell to come to a place where I was still alive,” Dean summed up when it seemed like the kid was finally done talking. He was blinking and shuddering, and Dean had a feeling he wasn’t going to stay conscious much longer. It certainly seemed like he’d been through  _ something. _ He had so many more questions, but they’d have to wait. 

“I couldn’t bring you back,” he muttered. “No more demon deals…” He slumped against the back of the couch, and seemed to drift off. Dean thumbed the safety switch of his firearm back on and heaved himself out of the chair. The kid - Sam, he supposed - didn’t even twitch. Laying the gun on the entertainment center, Dean exhaled heavily. The smart thing to do would be to call the police, or maybe the nearest psych ward, and have this kid locked up where he wouldn’t do any harm. Then again, he considered, he hadn’t actually done any harm yet. The fake badges were setting off alarm bells, but although they looked damn good for forgeries, Sam had said he didn’t abuse them. He was going to have to make a decision: believe everything Sam said about being a hunter of supernatural creatures, or believe that he was insane, perhaps criminally so. The guns were no joke. Who went around armed like that? Like he was expecting to do battle at any moment. Dean had a buddy who was a combat veteran. Hennerson looked the same way sometimes, battle-fatigued and lost in terrible memories. He didn’t know what to believe. Sam was slumped over now, chin resting against his chest in a position that had to be uncomfortable. There was nothing saying he had to make a decision right away. In fact, it would probably be safer to keep this rogue Sam away from other people until Dean could figure out his angle. 

*

Sam woke to the smell of something spicy cooking. The room was dark, but light came in from one of the other doorways. Patting himself down, he realized his weapons were missing, but his cash was intact. His boots were nowhere in sight. Stretching, Sam pushed himself off the couch and looked around again. It was weird to see Dean surrounded by such domesticity. He’d nested when they settled into the bunker, but this was  _ different _ somehow. This Dean had always lived a normal life. This is what Dean might have been like in Sam’s own world, if Mary had never died. 

He heard voices over the sizzling of something in a frying pan. One of them was Dean’s, and the other was vaguely familiar. Sam quietly moved over to the doorway and peeked in, finding a spacious kitchen with a squat, square table in one corner. There were two chairs on either side of it, and a paperback novel in the middle, next to an open beer. Sam didn’t recognize the brand. Dean was standing over the stove, poking at something with a spatula. His cell phone was dark on the counter beside him, but he was clearly in the middle of a phone call. 

“Any plans to make me an uncle, Sammy?” Dean asked. Sam’s heart dropped out of his chest. 

“Are you kidding?” Sam’s own voice issued from the phone. “Jess and I are way too busy for kids. What about you, you ask that girl out yet? What was her name, Lisa?” 

_ Jess. Lisa.  _ A strangled gasp wrenched itself out of his throat. Jess, alive. This world’s Sam apparently married to her and living - elsewhere. He hadn’t told Dean about his Jessica. Couldn’t find the words to describe something Dean had witnessed for himself in their old life. Dean half-turned to look at him, then reached out and flipped a knob on the stovetop. 

“I gotta go, Sammy, I’ll call you later.” 

“Your new houseguest?” the other Sam guessed. “Bye, then. Be careful.” Anything else he might have said was cut off when Dean ended the call. 

“You okay?” Dean asked him, eyeing him warily. Sam found himself on the floor with no memory of sitting down. Dean was leaning over him, one hand on his shoulder. “Hey, hey, breathe. It’s okay. What happened? Deep breaths, okay? You’re having a panic attack. You’re in my house. Look around and tell me five things you see.” 

Dean was talking to him through water, but he could understand that he was meant to do something. “You,” he said immediately. “Uh, your kitchen table.” Trying to find the words to describe the things he was looking at were helping him get his breathing under control. “Chairs. An oven. A really  _ ugly _ oven mitt,” he added, peering at it. It was scarlet red, with dancing gingerbread men lined up across it. 

“Four things you can feel,” Dean said, ignoring the comment about the mitt, although Sam noticed his lips twitch. 

Going through the process - floor, the warmth of Dean’s hand on him, the weight of his own clothes - was calming him down. By the time they’d worked down to one good thing in his life, the attack was under control. 

“Wanna talk to me? What set you off?” 

Dean was watching him critically, probably to make sure he didn’t freak out again. “I told you that you - I - we - I was in school when you - he -  _ my _ Dean got me for a hunt,” Sam said haltingly. “I had a girlfriend. Jessica Moore.” 

Dean’s assessing look was back. “What happened to her?” His eyes were sharp but his voice was soft. 

“She died - horribly. Violently. The same way - she burned to death, on the ceiling.” The whole apartment was a write-off. He’d lost everything that night. Sam buried his hands in his hair. “I guess me - the Sam here - he went - he’s married?” 

“Jessica Winchester,” Dean said slowly. “Maiden name, Moore. They met at Stanford.” 

Sam laughed hollowly. “And what do you do?” 

“Consulting agent and criminal profiler for the FBI,” Dean told him. Sam laughed again, a little less empty this time. “You hungry? I’m making cheeseburgers.” 

The third laugh was laced with bitter tears. “Sounds great,” he forced out. Dean didn’t need him here; he was only in the way. 

*

Sammy hadn’t quite believed him when he’d called; Dean could barely believe that he was saying it, so he didn’t blame his brother for his skepticism. “Yeah, so I have your clone here on my couch. He looks like he’s been through a war.” Not that he’d put it quite like that, but Sam had been appropriately shocked when he snapped a picture of the new Sam and sent it over. Deciding the burgers could wait for a few more minutes, Dean helped Sam back to his feet, and offered the use of his shower and the spare bedroom. 

“Sammy and Jess are the only people I have over, so there’s probably some of his clothes in the dresser,” Dean said awkwardly. He showed Sam where it was, found some suitable clothing still leftover, and demonstrated the facilities in the bathroom. “Take your time, I’ll keep it hot for you.” 

When the shower kicked on, Dean took the badges out of his pocket and studied them. They were excellent forgeries, which was alarming enough. He’d have believed it if Sam had come up to him on a case and flashed one of these at him. The shower cut off just a few minutes later, just long enough for him to have washed the grime off, and Dean hurriedly put the badges into his personal safe next to the confiscated weapons. He was back to the stove and finishing up the burgers when Sam wandered in wearing Sammy’s pajamas. The fact that they fit was almost surprising, and he couldn’t help but notice that they fit a little  _ too _ well. This Sam was either a gym rat or he’d really led an active life. 

_ Ease up. You’re his brother. Supposedly. He’d probably think it was gross if you started coming onto him. And he does look an awful lot like Sammy. _

The tee-shirt was stretched out and worn thin, and for the first time, Dean noticed the burn scar on Sam’s chest. It looked - it almost looked like a handprint. Sam saw him looking. “My anti-possession tattoo got burned off when we were trying to kick the angel out of me,” he explained dully. Dean didn’t even know where to begin unpacking that, and instead turned back to the burgers. “How do you want it?” 

“However you usually make it will be okay,” Sam said. Dean didn’t like the tone of his voice, but couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make things worse. He fixed the burgers and settled the plates on the table. Sam ate with a gusto that made Dean feel guilty for not offering him food earlier. Then he reminded himself that he still wasn’t sure this man wasn’t some sort of crazed murderer - he knew from experience that they looked and acted like normal people right up until the madness let loose - at worst, or a delusional paranoiac at best. “I’ll get out of your hair tomorrow,” Sam said when they were finishing up. 

Dean’s head jerked up. “Excuse me?” 

“Well, you don’t exactly need me here, do you? I don’t want to fuck your life up any more than I already have.” 

There were multiple reasons Dean didn’t want Sam out of his sight. All he said, however, was, “You haven’t even begun to fuck things up.” 

Sam looked miserable. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I usually hate it when people beg for comments, but I'd be mighty appreciative if you could drop a line and let me know what you think. I've been reading spn fanfics for the last year, and only made one other foray into writing my own. 
> 
> That said, I'm also in desperate need of a beta, so if anyone has the time and inclination...


End file.
